![[dr. bob]](/dr-bob-sm.gif)
Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 16 of 16. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by rayww on November 29, 2008, at 18:20:40
I know a person who lives in a home without "modern" conveniences. What are modern conveniences? Oh yes, they have become staples now. Hmmmmm.
Did you know that a person can actually live happily in a log cabin without electricity or running water? Even today. They can raise a large garden and do their own canning, and have enough fruit and vegetables to get through the winter. They can generate enough electricity to run a sewing machine and a refrigerator, a few lights, and a television if necessary, perhaps a washing machine, but no dryer. Clothes lines still work marvelously, except in the winter. Who needs clean clothes anyway?
Our life style, the one we take for granted and are so accustomed to, is a gift. Do we give thanks and appreciate it while we have it?
It could disappear in an instant. Just one little nuclear explosion high in the atmosphere would knock out all electricity. I think it's called "EMP" (Electromagnetic pulse)
Another thing we have, but haven't had all that long is the gift to be able to walk into a store and buy pretty much anything the mind can conceive of. These are gifts, and they come with a big price, one which our economy hasn't been able to afford, but we've kept piling on the debt. We should take a moment and feel gratitude for the privilege we have had of being able.
There are many other privileges we have assumed were ours for the taking. Can you list a few?
My opinion? We are waaay out of control. I think it is time to step back a notch.
Posted by Dinah on November 29, 2008, at 19:08:21
In reply to too grateful, posted by rayww on November 29, 2008, at 18:20:40
I know there are people who could. I'm not one of them. Perhaps if I'd never known better. But I'd be whining about air conditioning for the entire rest of my life, which would hopefully would be mercifully short.
But that's me.
Posted by fayeroe on November 29, 2008, at 20:47:05
In reply to Re: too grateful » rayww, posted by Dinah on November 29, 2008, at 19:08:21
We didn't have air conditioning at the ranch until 1998. I put a window unit in my mother's room because she had had 5 strokes and needed to be cool.
We cooked on a woodstove until I was 13.
I've grown my own vegetables 20 years out of the last 25.
I use a clothesline.
I wash my clothes with cold water.
I haven't bought but three new articles of clothing this year. No new shoes.
I shop at the local thrift store.
My mechanic told me that he would track me down and shake me if I traded my 1999 Silverado in. I've only spent $500 on it since I bought it.
I cook for my dogs. I can't wean my cats off of dry catfood. :-)
I have a huge compost pile.
I use water from my washing machine to water my flowers.
The ranch has a well, electricity, gas and gardens.
I love being so self-sufficient.
My carbon footprint is very, very low.I love it!
Pat
Posted by seldomseen on November 30, 2008, at 9:33:56
In reply to Re: too grateful » Dinah, posted by fayeroe on November 29, 2008, at 20:47:05
I'm a lot like you Pat.
I grew up in a very very rural area.
From my great aunts and uncles I learned how to live without all the fluff because that's how they lived.
I can sew, milk a cow, make soap and candles, quilt, make butter, mayonnaise, and can can vegetables and pickle anything. I can also salt cure and smoke meat I can make molasses. This may not be for the faint of heart, but I can slaughter and dress all sorts of livestock.
I can grow anything. My family has three natural springs on their land.
I even have a lawnmower that doesn't use any energy but me.
Food cooked in a woodstove still tastes the best to me - especially cookies. Wood heat is still my favorite.
Am I grateful for all the fluff - oh heck yeah! Could I live without it? Yep.
Seldom.
Posted by Dinah on November 30, 2008, at 10:19:45
In reply to Re: too grateful » fayeroe, posted by seldomseen on November 30, 2008, at 9:33:56
My grandparents had a farm. My grandma never did like the newfangled stove her kids bought her and continued to cook on her wood stove. The bread was incredible. She did start using the new washer her kids got her. Drying was on the line. But she kept the old one too. It was some sort of tub with what looked like a meat grinder in it? I'm sure it wasn't a meat grinder.
They milked their own cows, and provided their own beef. I never much liked that the boy babies were destined for dinner. We also ate my bunny rabbit. And the chickens of course provided eggs and tasty chicken soup. Grandma chopped off their heads and plucked them herself. I distinctly remember her churning butter, though I don't think she did that regularly. Hard work, churning butter. I never really have liked the stuff they pass for milk in the grocery stores. Grandma's unpasteurized, unhomogenized milk, partially frozen, and with thick cream taking up half the bottle. That was milk. She canned too, of course. And kept her own vegetable garden.
Grandpa still drove the car my mother left their when she left to get married. Grandma's sewing machine was the sort with foot pedals. Loved that sewing machine. I don't think grandma had more than a few dresses. One Sunday best. Grandpa too.
I do know it can be done. And perhaps if I lived in northern climes it wouldn't seem nearly as unpleasant to me. Although... I seem to recall a lot of city slicker comments even back then. Apparently even at two or three, I could be a bit persnickety. I was there for two years, I loved my grandma to pieces, and of course I was way too young to help out in any meaningful way. The chickens scared me, so I didn't even gather eggs if I could help it. I named the cows, which annoyed Grandpa no end. I enjoyed having him squirt milk straight into my mouth, even though I didn't like warm milk. Most of the farm was off limits to a preschooler. I loved the snow. It was a different sort of heat there, and even when I went back to visit when I was older, I didn't mind the lack of an air conditioner.
I can't say I'd enjoy the life. But at least it wasn't hot there. I can't take the heat. Even when I was little, I was the kid who shed my coat and frolicked in cold waves, and sunk into torpor in the summer. Now I'm older, and fatter, I can't take the heat at all. To me, if the a/c isn't on, the house is broken and unusable. Even then, it's not enough in the summer, even with ceiling fans added. The inventor of air conditioning is on each year's Thanksgiving list.
I'd have to become a vegetarian too. No way am I chopping off chicken heads or killing boy calves or eating bunnies.
The ancestors on my mother's side were pioneers. I must take after daddy's side in that.
Posted by fayeroe on November 30, 2008, at 12:05:45
In reply to Re: too grateful » fayeroe, posted by seldomseen on November 30, 2008, at 9:33:56
I am very lucky in that I live in a secluded little house in a quiet part of time. Behind my back yard is a huge open area and beyond that is a springfed creek. My house is surrounded by oak and pecan trees. Friends who visit are surprised that anyone lives back here. It is so country like and quiet. I have every little mammal known to man that visits my yards. Three sets of owls live by the creek. Barred Owls, Great Horned Owls and Screech Owls!
Seldom, you will love this! When I moved to New Mexico in 1990, the villagers were extremely leery of me. Village of 125 and the majority of the inhabitants are Spanish.
One day a neighbor drove up and said that I needed a load of wood. I had already bought 4 loads from him and I started wondering what he was smoking. :-) He insisted upon unloading the wood, so I let him.
He and his friend had been hunting and had hidden the carcass of a deer under the wood. They kept watching my face and it was apparent that I was thrilled to receive such a gift! What a shock they received when I hung the deer in my washroom, got my boning knife out of the kitchen and went to work! Then they brought me other "gifts" during the winter and I never blanched when I saw what I was getting from them. I LOVED it.Venison is organic so I will eat it if I have a chance. White/Indian woman shocked the hell out of the village. It was no time until I was one of the "guys"..
In the early 2000s I had Rocky Mountain Spotted Tick Fever and my neurologist said that I had to eat organic meat. I was stunned because I hadn't eaten red meat in years and years. She insisted and my distant cousins started bringing venison to the house. My daughter and I have photographs of us working away in the kitchen with my cousins standing there openmouthed. :-)
We washed our clothes with lye soap til I was about 15.Mom heated the water in a huge iron pot.My daughters and I all make candles.
I love that kind of life. I will move back to the ranch in a couple of years and take up where I left off. AHHHHHHHHH, that wonderful woodstove that heats the entire house with the best warmth.
I was born in 1943..that is why I know all of this stuff. And I was also born in the mountains which were wild and we had to depend upon Mother Earth for almost everything. The downside is that I am very softhearted and it always really affected me when butchering day came around. I hid under my bed so I couldn't hear the shots. I had to quit naming the animals. :-)
My mom made the most beautiful quilts and crocheted constantly. I learned at her knee how to make my clothing but I was never very good at crocheting. I decided that I would learn recently and it didn't stick. In fact it was a huge mess.
I recently bought a pair of new Ralph Lauren slacks at a thrift store for $1.00 and I called the cleaners to ask about having them hemmed. It is $17.95! I could have gone to Target and bought the pants and a top for that...I will hem them and save $18.00. :-)
Great discussion, Seldom`!
Pat
Posted by fayeroe on November 30, 2008, at 12:22:35
In reply to Re: too grateful » fayeroe, posted by seldomseen on November 30, 2008, at 9:33:56
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.htm?_r=2
Very interesting article. Bill Moyers had Michael POllan on his show Friday night. As always, Bill Moyers turns up with well thought out and timely subjects.
Food, food, food. It is becoming a huge problem all over the world.
Posted by rayww on November 30, 2008, at 12:33:48
In reply to Re: too grateful, posted by Dinah on November 30, 2008, at 10:19:45
We used to chop big blocks of ice out of the river, then carry them up the hill on a wagon pulled by a team of horses. We put the ice in our ice house, which was a little shed with piles of saw dust on the floor. When buried in saw dust the ice would remain frozen till the next year. I can remember making home made ice cream in the middle of summer from that ice. We had a root cellar that kept most other things refrigerated, but a small ice box inside the house helped. Our drinking water was kept in a galvanized bucket on the wash stand, complete with the dipper for drinking. It was pumped from the cistern. We filled the cistern with a horse drawn water wagon, straight from the river. It was never really cold, and always had a tinny taste, that I can still taste when I think about it.
I asked my mother this summer what her secret was for making delicious dill pickles. She didn't know. She just used the water......so I tried natural spring water and it worked.
I remember when grandma got her first electric clothes drier. I buried my face in the warm soft towels.
It is no wonder my childhood is so indelibly etched. Those are memories I could never forget.
Less pleasant memories are getting stuck in the mud on my way out to the barn or the pig pen, standing there hollering till my daddy rescued me.
But the memory of fresh chicken cooked in a coal stove are the best. But carrying out the ashes, not so good....hauling dirty old coal...washing the walls and ceilings every year after winter, dark with coal dust, and the curtains.
But the houses were small and the curtains few.
It seemed like back then we just lived to live. There was no other way. It was rich and fulfilling, no empty space anywhere.
I've watched prosperity happen, along with some of you, for the past 50 years. Is it real if we depend on someone else for our sustenance? The answer has to be "no" its not real, it's a gift, but we'll gladly swing along with it as long as we can, and be grateful.
Posted by Dinah on November 30, 2008, at 12:48:48
In reply to Re: too grateful, posted by rayww on November 30, 2008, at 12:33:48
It's all a gift isn't it? My grandparents considered all that they had a gift. Perhaps they were only too aware that no matter how hard you worked, there were just too many things outside your control.
I miss the fruit from around there. My aunt had the best of all worlds, from my point of view. A suburban home on a lot large enough to have an extensive fruit and vegetable garden. Granny Smith apples fresh off the tree. Mmmmmm......
My father grew tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers (tho the dogs had a particular fondness for peppers). One year we actually got corn to grow large enough to eat.
Posted by fayeroe on November 30, 2008, at 12:58:59
In reply to Re: too grateful, posted by rayww on November 30, 2008, at 12:33:48
My daddy also cut ice out of the creek to make ice cream! That was really a treat. I don't know how old I was when I saw a "sack" of ice.
Carrying out ashes was not my favourite chore either.
Posted by rayww on November 30, 2008, at 22:23:59
In reply to Re: too grateful » rayww, posted by fayeroe on November 30, 2008, at 12:58:59
There were no locks on the doors. In the summer we left the screen door, no lock but a hook just to make sure it didn't blow open and let some furry varmint into the house. Keys were left in the vehicles, so we wouldn't misplace them.
What does all this have to do with politics? Have we been on a path to socialism the last 50 years, faking prosperity so the masses would willingly go along? If the deficit has been increasing all that time what would it mean to you? To me a deficit budget means you are building something based on nothing, which does catch up at some point. You keep hoping the deficit will earn more points, thus bring wealth, but somehow the points get channelled to the few pulling the strings.
What is our point of reconciliation going to look like? I fear we are about to find out.
As a nation, we are going to balance our books, not just our wealth either. What have we learned and where are we going? Have we ignored our banker, as though he doesn't exist, hoping we can keep going our own way, altering the laws, make it up as we go along. That seems to be the game we are playing now.
My opinion is that we are pushing our limits as far as we can. But when we weaken our base, the whole thing crumbles. What do you call the base of America/Canada/Australia/England/etc?
Posted by Jay_Bravest_Face on December 1, 2008, at 16:43:19
In reply to too grateful, posted by rayww on November 29, 2008, at 18:20:40
So, we should all jump in the race to regress? That is a race to the bottom. The real point is, that the middle-class have come under attack from the rich. It's like they want to go back to Feudalism, or have that tiny 1 percent of the richest rich, own 99 percent of the world. If you have ever taken an Economics course, you know that money does not disappear. Somebody, or some 'elite' group is getting very rich these days. (Certain politicians come to mind..!) The rest of us are told we have to cut-back. (Who needs a house anyways??? Food...naaaa. All of those scientists creating cures for many diseases via stem cell research...who needs a cure?)Read on....
The Wealth Divide
The Growing Gap in the United States
Between the Rich and the RestAn Interview with Edward Wolff
Edward Wolff is a professor of economics at New York University. He is the author of Top Heavy: The Increasing Inequality of Wealth in America and What Can Be Done About It, as well as many other books and articles on economic and tax policy. He is managing editor of the Review of Income and Wealth.
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(A scientific, not opinion, based article. Numbers, facts, figures.)Multinational Monitor: What is wealth?
Edward Wolff: Wealth is the stuff that people own. The main items are your home, other real estate, any small business you own, liquid assets like savings accounts, CDs and money market funds, bonds, other securities, stocks, and the cash surrender value of any life insurance you have. Those are the total assets someone owns. From that, you subtract debts. The main debt is mortgage debt on your home. Other kinds of debt include consumer loans, auto debt and the like. That difference is referred to as net worth, or just wealth.MM: Why is it important to think about wealth, as opposed just to income?
Wolff: Wealth provides another dimension of well-being. Two people who have the same income may not be as well off if one person has more wealth. If one person owns his home, for example, and the other person doesnt, then he is better off.Wealth strictly financial savings provides security to individuals in the event of sickness, job loss or marital separation. Assets provide a kind of safety blanket that people can rely on in case their income gets interrupted.
Wealth is also more directly related to political power. People who have large amounts of wealth can make political contributions. In some cases, they can use that money to run for office themselves, like New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
MM: What are the best sources for information on wealth?
Wolff: The best way of measuring wealth is to use household surveys, where interviewers ask households, from a very detailed form, about the assets they own, and the kinds of debts and other liabilities they have run up. Household surveys provide the main source of information on wealth distribution.Of these household surveys there are now about five or six surveys that ask wealth questions in the United States probably the best source is the Federal Reserve Boards Survey of Consumer Finances.
They have a special supplement sample that they rely on to provide information about high income households. Wealth turns out to be highly skewed, so that a very small proportion of families owns a very large share of total wealth. Most surveys miss these families. But the Survey of Consumer Finances uses information provided by the Internal Revenue Service to construct a special supplemental sample on high income households, so they can zero in on the high wealth holders.
MM: How do economists measure levels of equality and inequality?
Wolff: The most common measure used, and the most understandable is: what share of total wealth is owned by the richest households, typically the top 1 percent. In the United States, in the last survey year, 1998, the richest 1 percent of households owned 38 percent of all wealth.This is the most easily understood measure.
There is also another measure called the Gini coefficient. It measures the concentration of wealth at different percentile levels, and does an overall computation. It is an index that goes from zero to one, one being the most unequal. Wealth inequality in the United States has a Gini coefficient of .82, which is pretty close to the maximum level of inequality you can have.
MM: What have been the trends of wealth inequality over the last 25 years?
Wolff: We have had a fairly sharp increase in wealth inequality dating back to 1975 or 1976.Prior to that, there was a protracted period when wealth inequality fell in this country, going back almost to 1929. So you have this fairly continuous downward trend from 1929, which of course was the peak of the stock market before it crashed, until just about the mid-1970s. Since then, things have really turned around, and the level of wealth inequality today is almost double what it was in the mid-1970s.
Income inequality has also risen. Most people date this rise to the early 1970s, but it hasnt gone up nearly as dramatically as wealth inequality.
MM: What portion of the wealth is owned by the upper groups?
Wolff: The top 5 percent own more than half of all wealth.In 1998, they owned 59 percent of all wealth. Or to put it another way, the top 5 percent had more wealth than the remaining 95 percent of the population, collectively.
The top 20 percent owns over 80 percent of all wealth. In 1998, it owned 83 percent of all wealth.
This is a very concentrated distribution.
MM: Where does that leave the bottom tiers?
Wolff: The bottom 20 percent basically have zero wealth. They either have no assets, or their debt equals or exceeds their assets. The bottom 20 percent has typically accumulated no savings.A household in the middle the median household has wealth of about $62,000. $62,000 is not insignificant, but if you consider that the top 1 percent of households average wealth is $12.5 million, you can see what a difference there is in the distribution.
MM: What kind of distribution of wealth is there for the different asset components?
Wolff: Things are even more concentrated if you exclude owner-occupied housing. It is nice to own a house and it provides all kinds of benefits, but it is not very liquid. You cant really dispose of it, because you need some place to live.The top 1 percent of families hold half of all non-home wealth.
The middle classs major assets are their home, liquid assets like checking and savings accounts, CDs and money market funds, and pension accounts. For the average family, these assets make up 84 percent of their total wealth.
The richest 10 percent of families own about 85 percent of all outstanding stocks. They own about 85 percent of all financial securities, 90 percent of all business assets. These financial assets and business equity are even more concentrated than total wealth.
MM: What happens when you disaggregate the data by race?
Wolff: There you find something very striking. Most people are aware that African-American families dont earn as much as white families. The average African-American family has about 60 percent of the income as the average white family. But the disparity of wealth is a lot greater. The average African-American family has only 18 percent of the wealth of the average white family.MM: Are you able to do a comparable analysis by gender?
Wolff: It is hard to separate out husbands and wives. Most assets are jointly held, so it is not really possible to separate which assets are owned by husband and which by wife. Even when things are specifically owned by one spouse or another, the other spouse usually has some residual lien on the assets, as we know from various divorce proceedings. If a pension account is owned by the husband and the family splits up, the wife typically gets some ownership of the pension assets. The same thing is true for an unincorporated business owned by the husband. It really is not that easy to separate out gender ownership in the family.What we do know is that single women, or single women with children, have much lower levels of wealth than married couples.
MM: How does the U.S. wealth profile compare to other countries?
Wolff: We are much more unequal than any other advanced industrial country.Perhaps our closest rival in terms of inequality is Great Britain. But where the top percent in this country own 38 percent of all wealth, in Great Britain it is more like 22 or 23 percent.
What is remarkable is that this was not always the case. Up until the early 1970s, the U.S. actually had lower wealth inequality than Great Britain, and even than a country like Sweden. But things have really turned around over the last 25 or 30 years. In fact, a lot of countries have experienced lessening wealth inequality over time. The U.S. is atypical in that inequality has risen so sharply over the last 25 or 30 years.
MM: To what extent is the wealth inequality trend simply reflective of the rising level of income inequality?
Wolff: Part of it reflects underlying increases in income inequality, but the other significant factor is what has happened to the ratio between stock prices and housing prices. The major asset of the middle class is their home. The major assets of the rich are stocks and small business equity. If stock prices increase more quickly than housing prices, then the share of wealth owned by the richest households goes up. This turns out to be almost as important as underlying changes in income inequality. For the last 25 or 30 years, despite the bear market weve had over the last two years, stock prices have gone up quite a bit faster than housing prices.MM: A couple years ago there was a great deal of talk of the democratization of the stock market. Is that reflected in these figures, or was it an illusion?
Wolff: I would say it was more of an illusion. What did happen is that the percentage of households with some ownership of stocks, including mutual funds and pension accounts like 401(k)s, did go up very dramatically over the last 20 years. In 1983, only 32 percent of households had some ownership of stock.By 2001, the share was 51 percent. So there has been much more widespread stock ownership, in terms of number of families.
But a lot of these families have very small stakes in the stock market. In 2001, only 32 percent of households owned more than $10,000 of stock, and only 25 percent of households owned more than $25,000 worth of stock.
So a lot of these new stock owners have had relatively small holdings of stock. There hasnt been much dilution in the share of stock owned by the richest 1 or 10 percent. Stock ownership is still heavily concentrated among rich families. The richest 10 percent own 85 percent of all stock.
As a result, the stock market boom of the 1990s disproportionately benefited rich families. There were some gains by middle class families, but their average stock holdings were too small to make much difference in their overall wealth.
MM: Apart from the absolute level of wealth of people at the bottom of the spectrum, why should inequality itself be a matter of concern?
Wolff: I think there are two rationales. The first is basically a moral or ethical position. A lot of people think it is morally bad for there to be wide gaps, wide disparities in well being in a society.If that is not convincing to a person, the second reason is that inequality is actually harmful to the well-being of a society. There is now a lot of evidence, based on cross-national comparisons of inequality and economic growth, that more unequal societies actually have lower rates of economic growth. The divisiveness that comes out of large disparities in income and wealth, is actually reflected in poorer economic performance of a country.
Typically when countries are more equal, educational achievement and benefits are more equally distributed in the country. In a country like the United States, there are still huge disparities in resources going to education, so quality of schooling and schooling performance are unequal. If you have a society with large concentrations of poor families, average school achievement is usually a lot lower than where you have a much more homogenous middle class population, as you find in most Western European countries. So schooling suffers in this country, and, as a result, you get a labor force that is less well educated on average than in a country like the Netherlands, Germany or even France. So the high level of inequality results in less human capital being developed in this country, which ultimately affects economic performance.
MM: To what extent is inequality addressed through tax policy?
Wolff: One reason we have such high levels of inequality, compared to other advanced industrial countries, is because of our tax and, I would add, our social expenditure system. We have much lower taxes than almost every Western European country. And we have a less progressive tax system than almost every Western European country. As a result, the rich in this country manage to retain a much higher share of their income than they do in other countries, and this enables them to accumulate a much higher amount of wealth than the rich in other countries.Certainly our tax system has helped to stimulate the rise of inequality in this country.
We have a much lower level of income support for poor families than do Western European countries or Canada. Social policy in Europe, Canada and Japan does a lot more to reduce economic disparities created by the marketplace than we do in this country. We have much higher poverty rates than do other advanced industrialized countries.
MM: Do you favor a wealth tax?
Wolff: Ive proposed a separate tax on wealth, which actually exists in a dozen European countries. This has helped to lessen inequality in European countries. It is also, I think, a fairer tax. If you think about taxes that reflect a familys ability to pay, a familys ability to pay is a reflection of their income, but also of their wealth holdings. A broader kind of tax of this nature, would not only produce more tax revenue, which we desperately need, but it would be a fairer tax, and also help to reduce the level of inequality in this country.MM: In broad outlines, how would you structure such a tax?
Wolff: I would model it after the Swiss system, which I think is a pretty fair system. It would be a progressive tax. In the United States, the first $250,000 of wealth would be exempt from the tax. That would exclude 80 percent of all families. The tax would increase at increments, starting out at .2 percent from about $250,000 to $500,000. The marginal rate would go up to .4 percent from $500,000 to $1 million, and then to .6 percent from a $1 million to $5 million, and then to .8 thereafter.It would not be a very severe tax. In fact, the loading charges on most mutual funds are typically of the order of 1 or 2 percent. It would not be an onerous tax, but it could raise about $60 billion annually. Eighty percent of families would pay nothing, and 95 percent of families would pay less than $1,000. It would really only affect very rich families.
MM: Do you recommend non-tax approaches to deal with inequality as well?
Wolff: I think we have to provide a much broader safety net in this country.There are lots of things that we should do to strengthen our income support system. We can expand the Earned Income Tax Credit, which is now a fairly substantial aid to poor families, but which can be improved.
The minimum wage has fallen by about 35 percent in real terms since its peak in 1968. We should think about restoring the minimum wage to where it used to be. That would help a lot of low-income families.
The unemployment insurance system is in a real mess; only about one third of unemployed persons actually get unemployment benefits, either because they dont qualify or because they exhaust their benefits after six months. Typically the replacement rate is about 35 or 40 percent. In the Netherlands, the replacement rate is 80 percent. Our unemployment insurance system is much less generous than in other industrialized countries and can certainly be shored up.
Of course, the welfare system is in a total state of disrepair, since it provides very restrictive coverage. Even before the switchover from AFDC to TANF with the 1996 welfare reform bill, real welfare payments had declined by about 50 percent between 1975 and 1996. So we had already experienced an enormous erosion in welfare benefits, even before we adopted this new system.
Posted by seldomseen on December 1, 2008, at 19:54:55
In reply to Re: too grateful » rayww, posted by fayeroe on November 30, 2008, at 12:58:59
Did you ever make snow cream out of snow? I loved it because the hard work was already done!
Seldom
Posted by Sigismund on December 2, 2008, at 2:22:17
In reply to Re: too grateful, posted by rayww on November 30, 2008, at 22:23:59
There were no locks, you're right.
But that was back in, no doubt coincidentally, the days of socialism.
Where socialism didn't just mean taxing the rich a bit more.
It was 19/6 in the pound in the UK after the war.
It also meant nationalisation, which we have only now been forced to do because we cannot do without the rich.
Posted by fayeroe on December 2, 2008, at 10:31:58
In reply to Re: too grateful » fayeroe, posted by seldomseen on December 1, 2008, at 19:54:55
> Did you ever make snow cream out of snow? I loved it because the hard work was already done!
>
> SeldomOh joy, oh rapture! Some of my earliest memories are of my parents making snow ice cream! It is so good! And snow angels???
When we have snow, my daughters and I still make it. Of course I am totally out of the loop now (central Texas) so it may be awhile before I can make some.
Posted by fayeroe on December 2, 2008, at 10:34:10
In reply to Re: too grateful » rayww, posted by Sigismund on December 2, 2008, at 2:22:17
I just had a brain flip, Sigismund! Have you seen "A Day Without without Mexicans"? It is a nice satire on what the rich would do without day labor...You must see this! Pat
This is the end of the thread.
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